Tracks of a Rolling Stone by Henry J. (Henry John) Coke
page 15 of 400 (03%)
page 15 of 400 (03%)
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parting word of her forthwith.
The woman who corresponded with Buonaparte, and consoled the prisoner of St. Helena with black currant jam, was no ordinary personage. Most people, I fancy, were afraid of her. Her stature, her voice, her beard, were obtrusive marks of her masculine attributes. It is questionable whether her amity or her enmity was most to be dreaded. She liked those best whom she could most easily tyrannise over. Those in the other category might possibly keep aloof. For my part I feared her patronage. I remember when I was about seventeen - a self-conscious hobbledehoy - Mr. Ellice took me to one of her large receptions. She received her guests from a sort of elevated dais. When I came up - very shy - to make my salute, she asked me how old I was. 'Seventeen,' was the answer. 'That means next birthday,' she grunted. 'Come and give me a kiss, my dear.' I, a man! - a man whose voice was (sometimes) as gruff as hers! - a man who was beginning to shave for a moustache! Oh! the indignity of it! But it was not Lady Holland, or her court, that concerned me in my school days, it was Holland Park, or the extensive grounds about Charles Fox's house (there were no other houses at Addison Road then), that I loved to roam in. It was the birds'-nesting; it was the golden carp I used to fish for on the sly with a pin; the shying at the swans, the hunt for cockchafers, the freedom of mischief generally, and the excellent food - which I was so much in need of - that made the holiday delightful. |
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